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Atogepant, an oral calcitonin gene‐related peptide receptor antagonist, is approved for the preventive treatment of migraine. A phase 1, open‐label, single‐dose, 2‐period crossover study evaluated the effect of a high‐fat meal on the pharmacokinetics and safety of atogepant in 20 healthy adults. Administration of atogepant 60 mg immediate‐release (IR) tablets under fed conditions reduced the area under the plasma concentration‐time curve (AUC) from 0 to time t and from 0 to time infinity by approximately 18% and reduced the maximum plasma concentration (Cmax) by 22%. The 90% confidence intervals for the geometric mean ratios of Cmaxand AUC were not contained within the bioequivalence limits of 80%‐125%. There was no change in the median time to maximum plasma concentration in the fed versus fasted state. The incidence of treatment‐emergent adverse events (TEAEs) was similar between fed and fasted conditions. Four TEAEs were considered related to study intervention and were reported after participants received atogepant under fasted conditions (3 participants). A single‐dose atogepant 60 mg IR tablet was safe and tolerated under both fed and fasted states. Due to the wide effective dose range of 10‐60 mg/day for atogepant for the preventive treatment of migraine, the food effect on its pharmacokinetics is not considered clinically relevant.

This manuscript proposes a hybrid method for modelling solar water heating systems (SWHS) for the residential sector. The proposed hybrid method is the combination of fuzzy grey relational analysis (F-GRA) and pelican optimisation algorithm (POA), together called as F-GRA/POA method. The main aim of the proposed method is to increase the solar thermal energy generation and reduce the system cost. The operation of heating system is depending on solar thermal collectors, heat-only boiler, heat pumps, electric heaters, and thermal energy storage units. The F-GRA/POA method is utilised to calculate the maximal solar thermal energy generation with minimal possible net cost of the system under various constraints. Also, the proposed method considers the reduction of heat demand because of the thermal insulation of buildings, the amount based on the lowest net heat cost is analysed. Then, the performance of the proposed method is implemented in MATLAB site and compared with existing methods.

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is regarded as one of the key technologies for future systems due to its high spectrum efficiency and low hardware cost. However, high integration of sensing and communication also brings abundant challenges, e.g., waveform design, signal processing and fundamental performance limits, etc. In this work, we focus on the spatial-temporal delay analysis of sensory data transmission in ISAC networks. Specifically, the spatial distribution of sensing infrastructures (SIs) and fusion centers (FCs) are modeled by Matern cluster process. The Laplace transform of the interference experienced by SIs and FCs is quantificated and the service capability of sensory data transmission is obtained. With the sensory data flow characterized by successful sensing probability, the upper bound of network-layer queuing delay is analyzed via stochastic network calculus. Furthermore, we propose an optimal power allocation strategy to minimize the transmission delay, which balances sensing quality and transmission latency.

Threat biases are considered key factors in the development and maintenance of anxiety. However, these biases are poorly operationalized and remain unquantified. Furthermore, it is unclear whether and how prior knowledge of threat and its uncertainty induce these biases and how they manifest in anxiety.

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Abstract

AbstractThe flavonoid based 7-hydroxy flavone (PubChem CID: 5281894; molecular formula: C15H10O3) molecule has been isolated for the first time from the methanolic extract from the leaves of Avicennia officinalisL. in the tropical mangrove ecosystem of Andaman and Nicobar Islands (ANI), India. The molecular structure of bioactive compound was characterized by spectroscopic analysis, including FT-IR, 1H, 13C NMR spectroscopy and ESI-HRMS and elucidated as 7-hydroxy flavone. An anticancer activity of isolated 7-hydroxy flavone was evaluated by in vitrostudy against two different human cancer cell lines namely, HeLa (cervical cells) and MDA-MB231 (breast cells) and they exhibited promising anticancer activity with IC50values are 22.5602 ± 0.21 µg/mL and 3.86474 ± 0.35 µg/mL, respectively. The antioxidant property of 7-hydroxy flavone at a standard concentration of 50 µg, was found to be (IC50) 5.5486 ± 0.81 µg/mL. In summary, this investigation provides evidence that 7-hydroxy flavone exhibits both anticancer and antioxidant properties. Meanwhile, the antimicrobial activity ability of 7-hydroxy flavone were also evaluated using three Gram positive and two Gram negative strain exhibited no antimicrobial activities. Density-functional theory (DFT) studies confirm the structure is global minima in the PES, from the optimized geometry FMO and MESP map analyzed. Further, the molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation studies result shows that 7-hydroxy flavone has the better binding ability with anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 protein with the estimated free energy of binding of –6.3 kcal/mol. This bioactive compound may be act as drug candidate for treating various kinds of cancers. HighlightsA 7-hydroxy flavone molecule has been isolated from Avicennia officinalis.The isolated pure compound was subjected to spectral analysis such as FT-IR, 1H NMR, 13C NMR spectral data and HRMS analysis for skeleton of the molecule.The anticancer activity of 7-hydroxy flavone studied against Cervical (HeLa) cancer cell lines and breast (MDA-MB231) cancer cell lines with the IC50values of 22.5602 ± 0.21 µg/mL and 3.86474 ± 0.35 µg/mL), respectively.The antioxidant properties of 7-hydroxy flavone were found to be (IC50) 5.5486 ± 0.81 µg/mL at a standard concentration of 50 µg.DFT, molecular docking and MD simulation results explained that 7-hydroxy flavone could be the most promising candidate to inhibit the function of anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 protein in cancerous cell.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Bacterial wilt disease in brinjal caused by Ralstonia solanacearumis a major production constraint in Coastal regions of India. Among various management strategies, cultivation of resistant varieties is the most effective one. In this study, we screened 17 recombinant inbred lines for bacterial wilt resistance in green house followed by evaluation in the field for two years. Fifteen lines showed resistance to bacterial wilt. Two lines, 27-7-2 and 42-7-1 designated as Goa Brinjal-5 and Goa Brinjal-6 were released for bacterial wilt management as they exhibited 0 to 0.83% wilt and a yield of 0.76–0.84 Kg/plant. Field evaluation of six bacterial wilt resistant varieties for 2 years indicated that the wilt incidence was less than 3% while it was above 95% in the susceptible cultivars. Demonstration of six varieties in farmer’s field indicated that wilt incidence was less than 4% in the varieties compared to 77–82% in susceptible cultivars.

Data replication and task scheduling are two strategies to enhance the performance of data-intensive applications. One of the main issues in the Internet of Things (IoT)-Cloud scenario is uploading data from the sensor gateways and replicating it across multiple cloud data centres (DCs) for high availability. To avoid such problems, there is a need to adaptively determine the number of replicas and their optimum locations. Although data replication ensures availability and reliability, keeping many copies of each data will increase storage space use. To overcome this problem, a minimal number of replicas need to be maintained for these files. Most of the existing works consider the system as non-faulty, but in real-time, various faults may occur at every data centre (DC). Hence, the main objectives of this research work are to adaptively determine the number of replicas and their optimum locations, as well as to design a fault-tolerant scheduling algorithm for IoT-based Cloud. This paper deals with the design of dynamic data replication and scheduling framework using the Hybrid Fuzzy-CSO algorithm for the IoT-Cloud. It uses the Cat Swarm Optimization (CSO) algorithm to find the optimal locations for replications. The fitness function is derived from the distance between the main DC and the other DCs. A Fuzzy logic decision model was designed to determine the optimal number of replicas. During task scheduling, data replication was performed in the selected replication points and scheduled accordingly. The experimental results have indicated that the proposed Fuzzy-CSO framework attains minimum data transfer time, minimum response delay, and higher bandwidth utilization than the existing algorithms.

The objective of this work is to study the thermal behavior of phenol formaldehyde used un-cured and chemically (5% and 10%) cured wood polymer composites under different ratios. The wood flour with PF resin thoroughly mixed with by using rotary barrel type whizzer according to calculated volume proportions. The thermal behavior of these WPCs showed that the thermic stability slightly increases with inclusion of wood flour content. The characteristics of raw material and mixing ratios contribute a prominent part in the thermal properties of fabricated samples of wood polymer composites. The limit for temperature should be 250 °C for practical applications. The two way ANOVA is used to optimize the experimental results.

AbstractMangrove plants are a great source of phytomedicines, since from the beginning of human civilization and the origin of traditional medicines. In the present study, ten different mangrove leaf methanolic extracts were screened for the type of phytochemicals followed by assessing antimicrobial, anti-oxidant and anti-cancer activities. The efficient methanolic crude extract of Rhizospora mucornatawas further purified and characterized for the presence of the bioactive compound. Based on UV-visible spectroscopy, FTIR, NMR and HRMS analysis, the bioactive compound was 1,4-dihydroanthraquinone; also termed as Quinizarin. This identified compound was potential in exhibiting antimicrobial, antioxidant, and cytotoxic activity. Quinizarin inhibited the growth of Bacillus cereusand Klebsiella aerogeneswith minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of 0.78 and 1.5 mg/ml. The DPPH free radical scavenging assay revealed the maximum activity of 99.8% at the concentration of 200 µg/ml with an IC50 value of 12.67 ± 0.41 µg/ml. Cytotoxic assay against HeLa (cervical) and MDA-MB231(breast) cancer cell lines revealed IC50 values to be 4.60 ± 0.26 and 3.89 ± 0.15 µg/ml. Together the results of molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation studies explained that Quinizarin molecule showed stronger binding affinity (−6.2 kcal/mol) and significant structural stability towards anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 protein. Thus, the study put forth the promising role of the natural molecule - Quinizarin isolated from R. mucornatain the formulation of therapeutic drugs against bacterial infections and cancer. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Declines of pollinators and high mortality rates of honey bee colonies are a major concern, both in the USA and globally. Long-term data on summer, winter, and annual colony losses improve our understanding of forces shaping the viability of the pollination industry. Since the mass die-offs of colonies in the USA during the winter of 2006–2007, generally termed “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD), annual colony loss surveys have been conducted. These surveys gage colony losses among beekeepers of all operation sizes, recruited to participate via regional beekeeping organizations, phone calls, and postal mail. In the last three years, these surveys include summer and annual losses in addition to winter losses. Winter losses in this most recent survey include 5,937 valid participants (5,690 backyard, 169 sideline, and 78 commercial beekeepers), collectively managing 414,267 colonies on 1 October 2014 and constituting 15.1% of the estimated 2.74 million managed colonies in the USA. Annual losses are typically higher than either winter or summer losses, as they calculate losses over the entire year. Total reported losses were 25.3% [95% CI 24.7–25.9%] over the summer, 22.3% [95% CI 21.9–22.8%] over the winter, and 40.6% [95% CI 40.0–41.2%] for the entire 2014–2015 beekeeping year. Average losses were 14.7% [95% CI 14.0–15.3%] over the summer, 43.7% [95% CI 42.8–44.6%] over the winter, and 49.0% [95% CI 48.1–50.0%] over the entire year. While total winter losses were lower in 2014–2015 than in previous years, summer losses remained high, resulting in total annual colony losses of more than 40% during the survey period. This was the first year that total losses were higher in the summer than in the winter, explained in large part by commercial beekeepers reporting losses of 26.2% of their managed colonies during summer, compared to 20.5% during winter. Self-identified causes of overwintering mortality differed by operation size, with smaller backyard beekeepers generally indicating colony management issues (e.g., starvation, weak colony in the fall), in contrast to commercial beekeepers who typically emphasize parasites or factors outside their control (e.g., varroa, nosema, queen failure). More than two-thirds of all beekeepers (67.3%) had higher colony losses than they deemed acceptable.

Single crystals of BaTiO3exhibit small switching fields and energies, but thin-film performance is considerably worse, thus precluding their use in next-generation devices. Here, we demonstrate high-quality BaTiO3thin films with nearly bulk-like properties. Thickness scaling provides access to the coercive voltages (<100 mV) and fields (<10 kV cm−1) required for future applications and results in a switching energy of <2 J cm−3(corresponding to <2 aJ per bit in a 10 × 10 × 10 nm3device). While reduction in film thickness reduces coercive voltage, it does so at the expense of remanent polarization. Depolarization fields impact polar state stability in thicker films but fortunately suppress the coercive field, thus driving a deviation from Janovec–Kay–Dunn scaling and enabling a constant coercive field for films <150 nm in thickness. Switching studies reveal fast speeds (switching times of ~2 ns for 25-nm-thick films with 5-µm-diameter capacitors) and a pathway to subnanosecond switching. Finally, integration of BaTiO3thin films onto silicon substrates is shown. We also discuss what remains to be demonstrated to enable the use of these materials for next-generation devices.

This article is written on behalf of many colleagues, collaborators, and researchers in the field of complex oxides as well as current and former students and postdocs who continue to enable and undertake cutting-edge research in the field of multiferroics, magnetoelectrics, and the pursuit of electric-field control of magnetism. What I present is something that is extremely exciting from both a fundamental science and applications perspective and has the potential to revolutionize our world, particularly from a sustainability perspective. To realize this potential will require numerous new innovations, both in the fundamental science arena as well as translating these scientific discoveries into real applications. Thus, this article will attempt to bridge the gap between fundamental materials physics and the actual manifestations of the physical concepts into real-life applications. I hope this article will help spur more translational research within the broad materials community.

Cultivation of brinjal in Coastal regions of India is severely affected by bacterial wilt disease caused by Ralstonia solanacearum. In this study, recombinant inbred lines were developed and screened for bacterial wilt resistance. Seventeen promising resistant lines were evaluated in the field for two years and the results indicated these lines were resistant to bacterial wilt. Lines 262-4, 5-12-1, 66-8-1, 205-1, 12-2-4 and 28-8-5 were promising among the purple types (0 to 4 % wilt and yield 0.51 to 0.93 kg/ plant). Among the green types, lines 5-8-1, 93-8-1 and 92-3-7 were promising (0 to 5 % wilt and yield 0.64 to 0.79 kg/ plant). Demonstration of eight lines in farmer’s field indicated that lines 262-4, 5-12-1, 205-1, 5-8-1 and 12-2-4 were least infected (3 to 17 %). Based on these studies, four purple lines 262-4, 5-12-1, 66-8-1 and 205-1 were released as bacterial wilt resistant brinjal varieties in the State of Goa.

Wireless networks are inevitable constituents of the present communication world. The applications of wireless networks are numerous from fundamental communication establishment to high secured financial transactions. Providing security to communication and network transactions is an essential factor to protect the network environment from prying eyes of intruders. This work is targeted to provide a fast and reliable security protocol against intruder attacks based on the network behavior pattern analysis. Fuzzy logic is incorporated in this work to enable the swift security policy selection based on the behavioral pattern changes. Proposed functional blocks such as Node Behavior Analyzer (NBA), Cluster Behavior Analyzer (CBA), Integrated Network Behavior Tracker (INBT), Inversed Elegant Pairing Key Exchange (IEPKE) and Fuzzy based Security Policy Selector (FSPS) are commingled in the name “Behavior based Fuzzy Security Protocol for Wireless Networks” (BFSPWN). Improvements in standard wireless networks’ performance metrics such as Throughput, Latency, Jitter, End-to-End Delay and Security are considered in the evaluation process of proposed method.

This article is written on behalf of a large number of colleagues, collaborators, and researchers in the field of complex oxides as well as current and former students and postdocs who continue to enable and undertake cutting-edge research in the field of multiferroics, magnetoelectrics, and the pursuit of electric-field control of magnetism. What we present is something that is extremely exciting from both a fundamental science and applications perspective and has the potential to revolutionize our world. Needless to say, to realize this potential will require numerous new innovations, both in the fundamental science arena as well as translating these scientific discoveries into real applications. Thus, this article will attempt to bridge the gap between fundamental condensed-matter physics and the actual manifestations of the physical concepts into real-life applications. We hope this article will help spur more translational research within the broad materials physics community.

Pluripotent Stem Cells [PSCs] are emerging as an excellent cellular source for the treatment of many degenerative diseases such as diabetes, ischemic heart failure, Alzheimer’s disease, etc. PSCderived pancreatic islet β-cells appear to be a promising therapy for type 1 diabetic patients with impaired β-cell function. Several protocols have been developed to derive β-cells from PSCs. However, these protocols produce β-like cells that show low glucose stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) function and mirror GSIS profile of functionally immature neonatal β-cells. Several studies have documented a positive correlation between the sirtuins (a family of ageing-related proteins) and the GSIS function of adult β-cells. We are of the view that the GSIS function of PSC-derived β-like cells could be enhanced by improving the function of sirtuins in them. Studying the sirtuin expression and activation pattern during the β-cell development and inclusion of the sirtuin activators and inhibitor cocktail (specific to a developmental stage) in the present protocols may help us derive functionally mature, ready-to-use β- cells in-vitro making them suitable for transplantation in type 1 diabetes.

Healthcare industry is a platform which is introduced with immense technological advancements every day. Taking a populous country like India in picture and limited manpower in inevitable medical institutions, healthcare industries need alternate and foolproof techniques to ensure that quality and round the clock attention in provided to deserving people. Since automation and intelligent systems are developed in every domain known to mankind, hospitals and medical records, diagnosis, online pharmacies, surgeries operated by robots are coming into practice. This proposal is one of the promising solutions to limited manpower and decision support system to the medical practitioners. With the ideal knowledge of background information, literature and proposed algorithm, the proposal delivers architecture for supporting automated decisions to healthcare institutions. Electronic records are continuously collected and organized to provide a detailed history of patients, their diseases and diagnosis plans. The institution maintains a sufficient Datawarehouse for holding these diverse medical records and provides access to registered and trusted practitioners. The Datawarehouse regularly update the records and maintained by independent organization. From the obtained information, virtual doctoring engine (VDE) attempts to analyze the observable characteristics from the datasets using Known-Yet-Predict algorithm to propose an optimal diagnosis plan. This treatment plan will later be officiated by a doctor for treating the patients. The performance of VDE system is tested against patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases. The characteristics taken into consideration vary accordingly among individual patients and thus demands heterogeneous features to be extracted from patients’ electronic medical records. This approach has been investigated against various feature extraction algorithms and found to be 18.2% more accurate in predicting the optimal treatment plan. Steps to overcome missing information are also proposed in this model for ensuring an efficient decision support system.

Existing evidence strongly supports the thesis that sociodemographic variables, such as ethnicity, various forms of identity affiliation (religion, caste, and language), social norms, and level of education, tend to influence citizens’ ability to gain access to public services in developing societies. This article explores the extent to which ethnicity, social identities, and level of education influence access to public services in the Sri Lankan context, taking the plantation community as a case in point. The article finds that though there are constitutional mandates ensuring citizenry rights and entitlements to public services, sociodemographic factors considerably limit those rights for deprived communities. Based on the evidence, it is argued that improving the quality of governance and access to education for marginalized communities tends to reduce the discrimination suffered by these communities and to hold public institutions accountable. Thus, this study seeks to contribute to the existing literature on good governance and the delivery of public services to marginalized communities through focusing on the importance of sociodemographic conditions.

Invasive fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda(J.E. Smith) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is emerged as serious threat to maize cultivation in India. Rove beetle, Paederus fuscipesCurtis (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) are a generalist predator found predating on various stages of FAW. Field incidence of adult rove beetle started during the 40 standard meteorological week and reached its peak population of 6.83/m2during the 46 standard meteorological week. Within the season, the predatory adult beetle population was found significantly higher at reproductive phase (0.07 to 6.83/m2) than at vegetative phase (0.37 to 3.20/ m2). There was a significant difference on the feeding potential of adult rove beetle against various stages of fall armyworm. Adult P. fuscipesconsumed an average of 32.3 eggs, 35.6 first instar larvae and 24.4 second instar larvae of FAW per day. Adult predator fed more on first instar FAW larvae compared to eggs and second instar larvae. This is the first report of feeding potential of adult P. fuscipeson FAW. This study highlighted the role of native generalist predator P. fuscipesin managing invasive FAW. Therefore, conservation of P. fuscipescould be encouraged through use of safer insecticides.

Background: Osteoporosis is a term used to represent the reduced bone density, which is caused by insufficient bone tissue production to balance the old bone tissue removal. Medical Imaging procedures such as X-Ray, Dual X-Ray and Computed Tomography (CT) scans are used widely in osteoporosis diagnosis. There are several existing procedures in practice to assist osteoporosis diagnosis, which can operate using a single imaging method. Objective: The purpose of this proposed work is to introduce a framework to assist the diagnosis of osteoporosis based on consenting all these X-Ray, Dual X-Ray and CT scan imaging techniques. The proposed work named “Aggregation of Region-based and Boundary-based Knowledge biased Segmentation for Osteoporosis Detection from X-Ray, Dual X-Ray and CT images” (ARBKSOD) is the integration of three functional modules. Methods: Fuzzy Histogram Medical Image Classifier (FHMIC), Log-Gabor Transform based ANN Training for osteoporosis detection (LGTAT) and Knowledge biased Osteoporosis Analyzer (KOA). Results: Together, all these three modules make the proposed method ARBKSOD scored the maximum accuracy of 93.11%, the highest precision value of 93.91% while processing the 6th image batch, the highest sensitivity of 92.93%, the highest specificity of 93.79% is observed during the experiment by ARBKSOD while processing the 6th image batch. The best average processing time of 10244 mS is achieved by ARBKSOD while processing the 7th image batch. Conclusion: Together, all these three modules make the proposed method ARBKSOD to produce a better result.

Topological solitons such as magnetic skyrmions have drawn attention as stable quasi-particle-like objects. The recent discovery of polar vortices and skyrmions in ferroelectric oxide superlattices has opened up new vistas to explore topology, emergent phenomena and approaches for manipulating such features with electric fields. Using macroscopic dielectric measurements, coupled with direct scanning convergent beam electron diffraction imaging on the atomic scale, theoretical phase-field simulations and second-principles calculations, we demonstrate that polar skyrmions in (PbTiO3)n/(SrTiO3)nsuperlattices are distinguished by a sheath of negative permittivity at the periphery of each skyrmion. This enhances the effective dielectric permittivity compared with the individual SrTiO3and PbTiO3layers. Moreover, the response of these topologically protected structures to electric field and temperature shows a reversible phase transition from the skyrmion state to a trivial uniform ferroelectric state, accompanied by large tunability of the dielectric permittivity. Pulsed switching measurements show a time-dependent evolution and recovery of the skyrmion state (and macroscopic dielectric response). The interrelationship between topological and dielectric properties presents an opportunity to simultaneously manipulate both by a single, and easily controlled, stimulus, the applied electric field.